27 Interesting Facts about English Literature

English literature has a deep and interesting history. From William Shakespear, Charles Dickens to JRR Tolkien and JK Rowling, the world has witnessed some great writers. But what are the most fascinating literary facts? Read all of them below:

Interesting Facts about English Literature

1. Sherlock Holmes never said, “Elementary, my dear Watson”.
2. A Language dies every 14 days.
3. The first novel ever written on a typewriter was Tom Sawyer.
4. “I am.” is the shortest complete sentence in the English language.
5. There are only four words in the English language which end in ‘dous’: tremendous, horrendous, stupendous, and hazardous.
6. Ghosts appear only in 4 Shakespearean plays: Julius Caesar, Richard III, Hamlet and Macbeth.
7. Microsoft founder Bill Gates bought ‘Codex Leicester’, one of Leonardo Di Vinci’s scientific journals for a whopping $30.8 million in November 1994.
8. Roald Dahl, the author of Charlie and the Chocolate factory, tested chocolates for Cadbury’s while he was at school.
9. Marcel Proust’s ‘Remembers of Things Past’ is the longest book in the world at 9,609,000 characters. The book is highly inspired by Proust’s personal experiences.
10. Lewis Carroll’s book ‘Alice in Wonderland’ was banned in China as the book suggests animals can talk and write just like humans, which according to the governor of Hunan, China is “disastrous”.
11. ‘Stewardesses’ is the longest word that is typed with only the left hand.
    

12. No word in the English language rhymes with month, orange, silver, and purple.
13. The only 15 letter word that can be spelt without repeating a letter is uncopyrightable.
14. ‘SWIMS’ upside down still looks like ‘SWIMS’.
15. The sentence “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.” uses every letter in the alphabet.
16. The town of Hamelin, Germany famous for the legend of the rat-catching Pied Piper has a Modern day Rat Problem due to the food left by tourists.
17. The name for Oz in the “Wizard of Oz” was thought up when the creator, Frank Baum, looked at his filing cabinet and saw A-N, and O-Z, hence “Oz.”.
18. ‘Aloha’ is a Hawaiian word that means both hello and goodbye.
19. The longest English word without a vowel is – rhythm.
20. The Times (UK’s newspaper) of 22 August 1978 contained the most number of misprints – about 97. In one story about the Pope, he was called “the Pop” throughout the article.
21. ‘The Mouse Trap’ by Agatha Christie is the longest-running play in history.
22. All of the roles in Shakespeare’s plays were originally acted by men and boys. In England at that time, it wasn’t proper for females to appear on stage.
23. ‘Dreamt’ is the only English word that ends in the letters ‘mt’.
24. The original story from Tales of 1001 Arabian Nights begins, ‘Aladdin was a little Chinese boy.’.
25. John Milton used 8,000 different words in his poem ‘Paradise Lost.’.
26. In the original story, Sleeping beauty was raped by the prince and gave birth to 2 children. She woke up when a kid sucked on her finger.
27. Silent and Listen are spelt with the same letters.

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